A composition must make possible the freedom and dignity of the performer.

It should allow both concentration and release.

No sound or noise is preferable to any other sound or noise.

Listeners should be as free as the players.

They are also listed in a book called ‘Audio Culture – Readings In
Modern Music’, edited by Cox and Warner, which is a mighty fine read.

I was particularly drawn to allowing “both concentration and release” – which is the one that Burrows talked most about on Monday. So much of my training as a choreographer/dancer has been about ‘filling’ an audience with an experience and although I understand that sonic and visual perceptual systems are different, there is something liberating (both as an audience member and a performance maker) about the possibility of allowing for (perhaps even desiring) time and space for ‘release’.

I am currently running (walking?) an MA level module called “Dance Practice as Research”. As part of the early stages of their research, I thought it might be useful for the students to try and write a brief artist’s statement. This has followed a series of short conversations (with each other, with themselves – “self-interviews” – http://www.everybodystoolbox.net/?q=node/43) …

The task was shared as “I’d like you to prepare and share (love a rhyme) an “Artist’s statement” for this blog. It should be a concerted effort to write clearly about your choreographic/performative research interests. Be succinct (3-4 sentences ought to do it).”

As a dancer and choreographer, I’m interested in exploring the psychology of human experience, and particularly ideas related to memory, time and death. I try and keep the audience-performer relationship in the very foreground of my projects. I’ve developed a cross-disciplinary (and highly collaborative) practice – words, movement, mediated image – and am curious how these different activities alter the rhythms of performance, and also the interpretative experiences of audiences.